Page 28 of Clive Cussler The Iron Storm (An Isaac Bell Adventure #15)

F our hours later, the jail cells were quiet except for the occasional snore or soft grunt of a man being tortured by his dreams. Liam Holmes had arranged for Bell to share his cell that night.

He’d given back the knife as soon as Bell had returned from his interrogation and together they had sketched out the bare minimum of a plan to get them all out of the prison castle.

Three guards remained on duty in the basement at night.

They usually slept in shifts out of boredom and only occasionally left the reception area to check on their prisoners in the back cells.

Since returning from Kreisberg’s office, Bell had been moaning theatrically and occasionally retching.

The guards knew well Schmidt’s handiwork and gave it little thought.

“It’s time,” Bell whispered to Holmes, who was on the bottom of the bunk beds.

Bell started crying out as if his very life was in the balance. “Help me, please,” he wailed. “Something is wrong inside of me.”

It was an old ploy and usually wouldn’t work, but the guards here knew they had high-level prisoners, officers, and that there would be severe consequences if one died while under their eye.

Two guards quickly appeared at the door.

Holmes moved to the rear of the cell with his hands over his head.

Bell remained curled on the cold floor next to the slop bucket.

The door was opened. One guard remained just outside the cell, his rifle in hand, but not particularly concerned.

The guard that crossed over to Bell had left his weapon out in the main reception area.

He came to Bell and asked something in German.

Bell moaned a pained response and gave the guard no other option but to gesture for Liam Holmes to help lift him to his feet.

Holmes came over and together they got Bell to stand.

He swayed with an arm over both men’s shoulders and them taking most of his weight.

In lockstep they crossed back to the cell door.

As they neared, Bell lurched through the doorway into the guard standing outside.

In the same instant, Holmes used all of his strength to jam the razor-sharp knife through that guard’s uniform coat and shirt, and in between his third and fourth ribs.

His heart stopped almost instantly, but even so he would have been able to cry out had the Englishman not clamped his left hand over the man’s mouth.

While this was happening, Bell had gotten his other hand onto the back of the first guard’s head for leverage and used the one draped over his shoulder to snap his neck around in a spiral fracture that severed his spinal cord.

To keep up the ruse for the guard out in the main part of the basement, Bell moaned a few more times.

They quickly searched both guards for keys and anything else that could aid in their escape.

Apart from a small pocketknife and the Gewehr model 98 bolt-action rifle, they found nothing useful.

Bell left those to Holmes and took back his boot knife, which Holmes had cleaned off on the dead guard’s tunic.

Bell left Holmes to drag the bodies into the cell.

He padded down the hallway with his knife in hand.

The third guard wasn’t behind the counter, but there was light spilling from around a partially closed door to a room behind it.

He crossed to it and peered inside. The third guard happened to be looking toward the door at that exact second and saw an unfamiliar face.

There was an alarm button wired to the wall a few feet from where he sat.

He turned to activate it as Bell reversed the grip on his knife and threw it in a well-practiced maneuver.

Even as the blade tumbled through the air, Bell was rushing in after it.

The tip of the knife sliced between the delicate bones in the back of the man’s hand a moment before he reached the alarm and emerged through his palm with enough force to slam the weapon’s small hilt against his skin.

Bell was there a moment later, gripping the knife and using his momentum to plunge the dagger into the man’s chest. He eased the dying man to the floor and waited for him to expire before yanking the boot knife free.

He took the guard’s Luger pistol and jammed two spare magazines into his pants pocket.

By the time he returned to the cell block, Holmes had the other doors open and the other five men freed.

They had discussed earlier that while Bell had no choice but to escape tonight or face certain execution, the others had no desire to spend the rest of the war as prisoners of the German empire.

Better to risk recapture or death than to meekly accept such a fate.

They didn’t know how the drafty castle was used at night, if there were dormitories inside or roving guards, so Bell told the Brits to wait in the basement while he reconnoitered the old keep.

He climbed the stone steps on the balls of his feet, the Luger at the ready, his index finger just outside the trigger guard.

Bell suspected that if anyone slept in the building it would be on the upper floors, but still he kept to the shadows when he reached the main level.

A single lamp had been left on, a beacon in an otherwise inky black room.

He listened. All he heard was silence, as if the thick walls absorbed sound the way they blocked light.

Then came the merest whisper of something.

Not so much of a sound but a lack of utter silence.

Bell crouched, turning his head to determine the direction it was coming from, if it indeed was a sound and not his imagination.

Then came a barely perceptible glow from the big staircase up to the castle’s upper stories.

A few long seconds later, a guard carrying a feeble flashlight glided down the stairs, the leather of a rifle sling chafing against his jacket being the only sound he made.

At the base of the stairs, he paused, training the light left and right.

Bell was hidden behind a desk. Not the best spot if the guard performed a systematic search, but good enough if he just had a quick look around. He kept his breathing shallow and even.

The soldier started ambling about, not looking for anything in particular, but weaving about the large open space as if he had a few minutes to kill.

He even started whistling some Germanic opera Bell thought he recognized.

The guard approached where Bell lay hidden, his light and gaze swiveling back and forth.

Bell tensed, ready for a surprised exclamation when he was discovered.

But he wasn’t. The man passed close enough to Bell that, had he wanted to, he could have grabbed his leg.

He continued walking around the great chamber for another couple of minutes and then left via the wicket gate cut into one of the massive main doors.

Bell let five minutes trickle by before going back down to get the others. He had been right in scouting ahead. Despite their best efforts, the airmen made more noise than the brass section of an orchestra as they crossed the empty hall.

Bell had them pause at the door. He opened it slowly, staying low so that anyone watching wasn’t likely to notice him.

The vast courtyard appeared deserted under the silver light of a waxing moon.

The castle complex’s thick perimeter walls looked black and as capable today of protecting those inside as they had when they were built a thousand years ago.

He kept watch for several minutes. There didn’t appear to be any sentries on patrol or anyone up on the walls looking inside. This far back from the lines, the Germans must have felt they were completely safe.

Bell took his first step outside when a teen dressed in chef’s whites appeared from around the keep’s corner.

He and Bell looked at each other in surprised confusion, neither expecting to see anyone out in the darkness.

Then the cook’s assistant noticed the gun in Bell’s hand and recognized that he was in danger.

He turned on his heel and took off like a frightened rabbit, vanishing back around the corner like a white wraith.

Bell had no choice but to take off after him.

If the cook raised an alarm he and his companions were as good as dead.

Captain Holmes had been close enough to Bell to see what happened and took charge of the escape.

They had always intended on stealing a vehicle, so with Bell in hot pursuit of the cook, he led the other flyers toward the motor pool.

Bell swept around the corner of the keep, moving as fast as he could.

He admitted to himself that he wasn’t in top form, especially with his kidney still aching, but he ran with a desperation born of necessity.

The cook was ahead, but not really pulling away despite his youth.

He had an awkward gait that cost him some speed.

The cook crossed from the shadow of the massive keep to the side of another stone building that looked to be the same age as the rest of the compound.

His arms were pumping and his feet slapping at the hard ground as he continued to flee in terror.

Thankfully it hadn’t occurred to him that he should be shouting his lungs out right about now.

There was a break between two buildings ahead, an extremely narrow alley, a remnant of stoneworkers being given just enough room to erect a second structure as close as possible to the first. Such alleys were common all over Europe.

The cook hooked an arm around the edge of the wall of the alley to turn himself down it as quickly as possible.

Bell was perhaps five seconds back. He took the sharp corner as though it were a racing line on a track and shaved another second off the fleeing chef’s lead.

Bell’s shoulders were a hand’s span away from either stone wall, which rose three stories and almost looked like they met above, as it was so dark.